Eversheds has expanded its consulting services business, Eversheds Consulting, with the launch of a financial services regulatory compliance offering, and recruited six senior consultants and a team of compliance contractors, including Jean-Paul Simoes and Jonathan Steward from EY and KPMG respectively.

Announced today (16 February) others to join includes Simon Chapman, Noreen Husain and Clive Summers from specialist regulatory and compliance practice Resources Global Professionals (RGP). They will be joined by RGP’s former managing director Simon Collins this month. The new venture will be spearheaded by financial services partner David Saunders, who prior to his move to Eversheds served as deputy general counsel at Nationwide Building Society.

Steward joins with 15 years of regulatory experience accrued at KPMG, Deloitte and as UK and EMEA compliance officer for insurer Beazley. Simoes comes from EY where he was a regulatory advisory manager, and having previously worked at Willis.

The firm stated it intends to make further investment in growing the team ‘over the coming months’, and Paul Worth, head of Eversheds’ financial institutions group, said: ‘The true differentiator here is that we will have lawyers and consultants under the same roof. The growth of the financial services regulatory consulting practice has already seen the firm winning work which otherwise would have gone to the “big four” accountants or risk consultants. This is a natural evolution of our financial services regulatory practice and provides us with the unique ability in the market to be a “one stop shop” for regulatory advice and assistance to our clients.’

Worth added, ‘Where appropriate it will also enable the client to rely on legal professional privilege, which is something which the accountants and risk consultants cannot provide.’

Eversheds was one of the first of the LB100 firms to enter the contract-lawyer market in 2010 when Eversheds Consulting was launched as a standalone legal consultancy offering, aimed at advising international in-house legal teams on how to manage their legal function more efficiently and effectively.

The service has already won work from clients including Barclays, ITN, Volvo and Du Pont and currently offers assistance with compliance, records management and dealing with legal suppliers as well as providing in-house teams with experts and approaches to tackling challenges within their organisations.

It follows RPC’s announcement last week of a new management consultancy business aimed at targeting its core insurance sector clients, with the firm hiring Rory O’Brien, the former head of risk consulting and software at Towers Watson, to spearhead the venture.